With the increasing popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web, it has become common for merchants to set up web sites for marketing and selling goods. One example merchant web site is an online store wherein customers may access and place orders from an online catalog that includes millions of products, such as, books, music, DVDs, toys, games, as well as a variety of other products and product groups. Customers may visit a merchant web site using a variety of methods, such as by directly accessing the web site or through interaction with a web site of one of the merchant's associates.
Some merchant web sites provide programs in which other entities, commonly referred to as “affiliates” or “associates,” refer customers to the merchant's web site—typically in exchange for bounty payments or commissions on resulting sales. Typically, each associate sets up a web site having one or more links (“referral links”) to the merchant's web site, although the referral links may alternatively be distributed by email or using any other suitable technology. The URL portion of each such link typically includes an associate identifier that allows the referring associate to be identified by the merchant, or by a third party program administrator, when a referral link is followed by a user. In some cases, the associates host the referral links together with descriptions, reviews, and/or recommendations of specific products or product groups, in which case the referral links may point to such products or product groups within the merchant's online catalog. In other cases, the referral links are simply in the form of advertisements, such as banner ads, that typically point to the merchant site's home page. For more information about associates programs, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,141 entitled “INTERNET-BASED CUSTOMER REFERRAL SYSTEM,” the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. In some cases, the tasks of setting up and administering associate programs are performed in-whole or in-part by a third party service provider or program administrator, rather than the merchant.
In addition, merchants commonly provide services on their web site for assisting customers in browsing an online catalog and purchasing various products from the catalog. Such services may be invaluable to an online customer, particularly if the customer does not have an opportunity to physically inspect the merchants' products or to talk with a salesperson. One type of service involves automatically generated lists of the best selling or most popular items within a specific community or interest group. The communities may be formed based on information about registered customers of the merchant web site, such as, email address, shipping address, and so forth. For example, it is known to automatically generate and display lists of the top selling items among customers of a particular email domain, such as “NASA.GOV,” or to customers within a particular zip code. These lists may be displayed to members of these “communities,” and may also be made available for general viewing by the public.
While email-based communities and shipping-address-based communities offer some ways to provide targeted recommendations and content, such groupings are limited and may not adequately direct customers to relevant information. Furthermore, such groupings do not provide much guidance for unrecognized or unregistered customers.